Module is available as a DIY project only.
This Module is a prototype or in a concept phase.
Simulated organ-stops and wave-shaped timbre thingy
A semi-DIY thing in the fact that I the layout is a VF original but the circuitry is heavily borrowed from another builder’s currently-available DIY Eurorack design – meaning, from an ethical standpoint, this post is more for posterity than anything else – but if you’re all about completing a collection or are one of the select few who have one of these, this one’s for you. Everyone else, bear with me.
So. Normally I’m not all about just taking someone else’s design, slimming it up a bit and slapping some artwork and a new name on it and calling it my own – and for the most part I still am, but when I cobbled this together I was staring down a deadline and needed a solution that would fit a specific footprint, as well as a way to test things before jacking into a custom wiring harness. To dive deeper into the explanation, most of 2023 was spent trying to unravel the gargantuan task of resurrecting a 50+ year old experimental microtonal organ with limited documentation on how to do so. Spoiler alert, yes, I did end up bringing this thing back to life quite successfully but there were some hiccups along the way, as well as some extraneous work done while we attempted of figure out the various ins and outs of the ordeal – this being one of them.
Specifically, this came from a concern regarding timbre. The original schematics called for fairly basic waveforms without much waveshaping, filtering or envelope control. I mean, it’s an organ – typically it’s an on-off ordeal with a pedal at the end for volume. Or something like that – not being an organist, I have a pretty simplified understanding of organ mechanics – BUT, fearing the reaction of my commissioners about to discover that my month’s of wiring created the analog equivalent of a musical calculator ala that one watch company, I was looking for a fast solution to thicken the speculative sound of this thing without much investment into design – but also a smaller footprint to wedge things into. One afternoon later and this is the result – a pretty innovative and funky wave tracker designed specifically to thicken square waves into a wonderful array of stacked octaves for fun and, well not profit, so just fun, I guess.
In the end, I ended up not using the circuit in the final build. As it turns out, when you have 300+ tones to choose from, even the simplest waveforms stack into some amazing timbres without any external processing – who knew? But even so, as there are a couple of these floating around and it does sound pretty cool, I figured I’d at least merit a post. So here we are.
1 Users are observing this
